The first time I listened to this song it took me back to the final big scene of "Face the Fire". What a perfect soundtrack it would make...
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“I’m
working on that, Mia, but this wasn’t your fight. It was ours.”
“I wasn’t
sure of that. I wanted to be, but I wasn’t sure, until you stepped out of the
circle in front of me. And what you felt for me . . . telling me you love me,
paled with the feeling it burst out of you in that one moment. I knew you’d come
after me. I knew then, without question, that we had to finish it together.”
"Good." Scooping up two hot pads, Sam bent down to
the oven.
"I left it on warm." He drew out a casserole of bubbly
lasagna.
Food wasn't something that usually excited her, but now
the
scent alone drew her over to his side. How long had it been since she'd seen
someone take a homemade meal out of an oven? "It looks wonderful,
too."
''My mother always told me food tastes better if it looks
good.''
The Name of the Game
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As the temperature drops, cravings for casseroles increase. Take a look at our casserole meal plan for November, giving you a satisfying recipe for each night.
"That's it?" His brows rose, and then he was
laughing and holding her close. "I thought you were going to ask me a
tough one. I want to marry you because I love you and I need you in my life. It
changed when you walked into it."
"And tomorrow?"
"A two-part question," he murmured. "I could promise
you anything." He drew her away to kiss her cheek, then her brow, then her
lips. "I wish there were guarantees, but there aren't. I can only tell you
that when I think about tomorrow, when I think about ten years from tomorrow, I
think about you. I think about us."
He couldn't have said it better, she thought as she touched
his face. No, there weren't any guarantees, but they had a chance. A good one.
"Can I ask you one more thing?"
"As long as I'm going to get an answer eventually."
"Do you believe in Santa Claus?"
What made it perfect, even more than perfect, was that
he didn't even hesitate. "Sure. Doesn't everyone?" Now she smiled,
completely.
"I love you, Sam."
The Name of the Game
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By Hannes21061984 [CC BY-SA 4.0
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
Before getting married, it's important to come to several layers of understanding with your partner. Obviously you'll want to discuss where you think you'd like to live, as well as fun things like how often you'd like to go on vacation. (You know, couple-y stuff.) But you'll also want to have some serious conversations before getting married.
While not always the most fun, it's important to ask the hard questions and learn as much as you can so you know who, exactly, you're marrying.
It was
very odd waking up with a man in your bed. A man took up considerable room,
for one thing, and she wasn’t used to worrying about how she looked the minute
she opened her eyes in the morning.
She
supposed she’d get over the last part, if she continued to wake up with this
man in her bed for any length of time. And she could always get a bigger bed to
compensate for the first part.
The
question was, how did she feel about sharing her bed—and wasn’t that just a metaphor
for her life?—with this man for any length of time? She hadn’t had time to
think it through, hadn’t taken time, she corrected.
Closing
her eyes, she tried to imagine it was a month later. Her garden would be exploding,
and she’d be thinking about summer clothes, about getting her outdoor furniture
from the shed. Henry would be due for his annual vet appointment.
She’d
be planning Jenny’s baby shower.
Laine
opened one eye, squinted at Max.
He was
still there. His face was squashed into the pillow, his hair all cute and tousled.
So,
she felt pretty good about having him there a month from now.
Try six months. She
closed her eyes again and projected.
But as he walked he glanced around, then stopped, staggered. Her gardens were a world.
Arches and arbors, slopes and flows. Stone paths softened by moss spreading through the cracks meandered through rivers and floods of flowers. Some were tender with spring, some already reigned. Not just blooms, he realized, but the green.
There were so many tones and textures of it that each spill or shimmer of pink or white, yellow or blue against it added a wonder.
There were pools of water, the glint of copper from a sundial, the charm of a dancing faerie twirling in the shrubbery.
He could see benches tucked here and there, some in sun, some in shade, inviting visitors to sit, to enjoy.
He couldn’t imagine what it would be like when the young plants burst into full summer bloom, when the vines finished their climb up the arbors.
Couldn’t conceive of the color and shape, the perfume.
Unable to resist, he wandered along some of the stone paths, trying to imagine how she had done it.
How she had turned what had been a pretty, if pedestrian, garden, a stretch of manicured lawn, and the single formal terrace he remembered into a celebration.
He glanced over, studied a small group of people on the opposite side of the street. They were decked in flowing robes and weighed down with silver chains and crystal pendants.
“Amateurs,” he commented.
“They’re harmless.”
“We could call up a storm, turn the street into a meadow. Give them a real thrill.”
In the dark green shadows of the deep woods, an hour before moonrise, they met in secret. Soon the longest day would become the shortest night of the solstice.
Dance Upon The Air
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Raymond Norris [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons
This year, the summer solstice falls on June 20 in the northern hemisphere and is celebrated across the world. In the northern hemisphere, the solstice heralds the beginning of summer and in the southern hemisphere, the beginning of winter. Here are some interesting facts about the day when the Earth is actually the farthest from the Sun.
The moon was nearly full. It would be fat and round by the weekend, and the solstice.
And a full moon on the solstice meant bounty, and promise.
And the rites of fertility that lead to harvest.
“Last year I went to Ireland for the solstice,” he told her. “There’s a small stone dance there, in County Cork. It’s more intimate than Stonehenge. The sky stays light until nearly ten, and when it begins to fade, toward the end of the longest day, the stones sing.”
But to what extent did she trust her instincts there,
weighing them with logic and past history?
A misstep with him could crush her a second time.
She might not survive it whole.
Face The Fire
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He opened his hand, and where her tear had lain was a slice of light. Grinning at her, he tossed it high, and stars fountained from it, raining down like little sparks of flame. “A symbol,” he said, plucking one of the lights from the air.
